You will have to decompress the file in software before rendering no matter what, so i don't see a point to this TBH. What exactly causes the crash? Also, as Luis pointed out, a 2MB .obj file is fairly big for an iPhone app.
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dretaJan 20 '13 at 21:45

The crash is caused because the file is too large to load. I am using AC3D (inivis.com/features.html) and memention.com/ac3dreader/usage to load the models in my app. I am also using blender to create or import and export in .obj format for the models. I can use all the formats listed in the first link. (basically the formats compatible with iOS apps) What procedure could I take for creating a 3d human model and loading it in an iphone app?
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Joey TawadrousJan 20 '13 at 22:19

OBJ is a text file and most of it are numbers (ASCII 48-57). You can compress it by using less polygons, or rounding decimal numbers (43.2614672346 -> 43.26 ... three times smaller file), or compress it with standard alogirhtms (ZIP). I am sure there are lots of ZIP implementations in Objective C.
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Ivan KuckirJan 20 '13 at 23:16

Very few kinds of assets are expressed effectively in text-based formats.

In the case of .obj meshes, the data in the file is not suitable for direct consumption in a 3D API either, as it has multiple indices per vertex and the possibility of more than three vertices per face.

Consider making a very simple binary file format suitable for direct use with your target platform. It would essentially consist of a header outlining the vertex and index counts for each geometry, followed by solidly packed blobs of vertex and index data.

Again, text formats for bulk data rarely make much sense, at least not at the deployment end of your pipeline. The closer to the end consumer a file format is, the more specific and optimized it should be.

Using text based file formats for assets can sometimes be useful during development (for trying stuff and debugging), but because they results in larger files and increase loading times, binary format is preferred in production. Even John Carmack admitted in some interview that using text based file format for Doom3 was a mistake. See here : fabiensanglard.net/doom3/interviews.php
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tigrouFeb 27 '13 at 14:24